Tuesday, February 28, 2017

In a statement, the American Studies Association said that it “strongly reproves the recent wave of attacks on synagogues, mosques, and religious community centers in North America and on the Jewish and Islamic people using those institutions.” The ASA, of course, is widely known not for “reproving” anti-Semitism but quite the opposite, a widely condemned resolution boycotting Israeli academics—a singling out of the Jewish state as part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has been denounced as anti-Semitic. Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist who “makes no secret of her opposition to Israel and support of BDS,” has raised significant money for the St. Louis cemetery—and believe you me, she is not keeping it a secret.

Yes it’s possible that Sarsour and the ASA are just bubbling over with empathy for the Jewish community that they have never shown for the Jewish state. It’s also possible that they are cynically exploiting the wave of anti-Semitism as political cover for their BDS advocacy. I lean toward the latter theory. It’s a bit like “Jew-washing”—the use of Jewish supporters in anti-Israel agitation—except that in this instance the Jews are safely dead.

It's also a little like Zion-loathers in the EU renting their garments over and throwing up yet another memorial to Holocaust victims, another group of "safely dead" Jews.

Update: Yehuda Kurtzer, head of the Shalom Hartman Institute's North American operation, sees nothing wrong in making common cause with the likes of Linda Sarsour, enemy of Israel though she undoubtedly is, because she is spearheading the chicks' anti-Trump movement. According to Kurtzer, we must eschew applying a "litmus test"--i.e. choosing our allies based on their willingness to accept Israel's right to exist--to those who "share" so many of our other ("progressive") values. As Kurtzer sees it,

The existence of multiple moral frameworks with which to view the world is not a sign of confusion; it is a sign of sophistication and strength.

Guess that makes me, a litmus test sort of gal, weak and unrefined.Update: Sarsour appears to exist within a single moral framework--the one commonly known as sharia law. That's what gives her the "moral" authority to say the most appalling things. For instance, this:

Though Sarsour led the feminist event in Washington, D.C., she has attacked Ali and other women who have criticized radical Islam and sharia law.

In 2011, Sarsour wrote in a now-deleted tweet that [Ayaan Hirsi] Ali and Brigitte Gabriel, another critic of radical Islam and sharia law, deserved to be beaten and have “their vaginas” taken away.

Me, I'm so unsophistimacated that I think Sansour's "moral framework" is heinous and poses a threat to all freedom-loving people.

Of course it is. And, as always, timing is everything. But for the horror in Quebec, this sucker would have never gotten off the ground. Re the move to insert a pivotal bit of sharia law into Canadian now that fans of the law have the opportunity to do so, Ms. Raza comments:

As a Canadian Muslim, I am very concerned about the direction we are headed in. My family and I came to Canada 29 years ago to embrace the values of a liberal democracy, of which freedom of speech is the most vital. M-103 will threaten free speech and goes directly against Canadian values. Canadians must speak out against this attack on their democratic values. But in many cases, people who are not prejudiced against any race or religion, but have concerns about this motion, are probably already feeling intimidated and may well choose to remain silent. This is the problem with motions like M-103. They cannot help but have a chilling effect on free speech and open debate. One need not be a cynic to suspect that’s actually the point, rather than a side effect.

Quite so. And for those who espouse either Islamist or hard leftist dogma--totalitarians to the core, the lot of 'em--our silence is golden.

How did such a thing as the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect come into being? As Daniel Greenfield explains, it was via the misuse--the misappropriation, really--of the most famous Holocaust victim's name.

Monday, February 27, 2017

It was most interesting to hear Helen Bouden, late of the BBC, currently teaching something or other at Harvard U., discuss the role of "public service" broadcasting on CBC radio yesterday. Bouden is convinced that this sort of broadcasting is so crucial because it provides information that is unbiased; info that the public needs to know, even if it doesn't know it needs to.What twaddle, thought I. Both the Beeb and the Ceeb, at least in their radio versions, are afflicted with a pronounced and pervasive leftist bias. And to claim that no such bias exists is, in a word, daft.Anyhoo, the Ceeb's Michael Enright went on and on about Brouder's storied career and plethora of honourary degrees. Something he neglected to mention (because it's damn embarrassing) is Bouden's part in the sorry Savile saga. Here's a brief synopsis (my bolds):

In December 2012, Boaden was asked to temporarily step down from her position as the Director of BBC News while the BBC awaited the results of Operation Yewtree,[9] a wide-ranging police investigation of sexual abuse, primarily of children, by former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile (who died in 2011) and others. A second and parallel investigation, launched by the BBC into possible management failings at the Corporation, called the Pollard Report after the lead investigator, Nick Pollard (a former senior executive at Sky News), criticised the BBC and several executive members for continuing with plans to celebrate Savile's life, despite apparently having received advanced information that Savile was being investigated for multiple cases of sexual abuse. The report explicitly criticised Boaden for having handled the matter too casually.[10] Boaden returned to her position later the same month.[9]

In February 2013, Boaden was appointed director of radio[11][12] by incoming director-general Tony Hall.[3]This was widely seen as a demotion...

Rather casts a shadow on the woman and her work, no? You can see why the Ceeb's Michael Enright would choose to not highlight it.

Iran is in the iron grip of crazed theocrats whose religious eschatology requires Jewry to be dead and gone so as to pave the way for the "return" of their messiah, the 12th imam. To that end, they are in the process of creating a nuke or two to lob at Israel, the country which has the highest Jewish population in the world.And yet, the "progressive" set care naught about that. What it cares about is ensuring that an Iranian director gets and Oscar, a way to stick it to Trump, they think:

The Iranian director behind Oscar-nominated film The Salesman told about 10,000 protesters in London that solidarity against Donald Trump’s travel ban holds the power to “stand up to fascism, be victorious in the face of extremism”.

Speaking hours before the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood, Asghar Farhadi said the movement against the US president empowered people to “say no to oppressive political powers everywhere”.

“I am extremely happy that the scattered reactions from people and art communities across the globe shown to the oppressive travel ban of immigrants has developed into a powerful and unified movement,” he told the protest on Sunday night.

“This solidarity is off to a great start. I hope this movement will continue and spread for it has within itself the power to stand up to fascism, be victorious in the face of extremism and say no to oppressive political powers everywhere.”

Appearing via videolink from Tehran, and joined by London mayor Sadiq Khan and Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh, Farhadi said: “We are all citizens of the world and I will endeavour to protect and spread this unity.”

The London screening of The Salesman on Sunday evening was intended to be a show of unity and strength against Trump’s travel ban, which attempted to block arrivals in the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

He had already been kidnapped and held hostage in Somalia--and ordeal he managed to survive. This time, however, he wasn't as lucky. (Why anyone would want to sail a boat in such treacherous waters is a complete mystery to me.)

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Ellison has a long history of sordid association with anti-Semitism. He worked closely with and supported one of a handful of the most notorious and public anti-Semites in our country: The Reverend Louis Farrakhan. And he worked with Farrakhan at the very time this anti-Semite was publicly describing Judaism as a “gutter religion” and insisting that the Jews were a primary force in the African slave trade. Ellison has publicly stated that he was unaware of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. That is not a credible statement. Everyone was aware of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. Farrakhan did not try to hide it. Indeed he proclaimed it on every occasion. Ellison is either lying or he willfully blinded himself to what was obvious to everyone else. Neither of these qualities makes him suitable to be the next Chairman of the DNC.

Moreover, Ellison himself has made anti-Semitic statements. A prominent lawyer, with significant credibility, told me that while he was a law student, Ellison approached her and said he could not respect her, because she was a Jew and because she was a woman who should not be at a law school. This woman immediately disclosed that anti-Semitic and anti-feminist statement to her husband and friends, and I believe she is telling the truth.

Ellison’s anti-Semitism is confirmed by his support for another anti-Semite, Stokely Carmichael. When there were protests about Carmichael’s speaking at the University of Minnesota, Ellison responded that “Political Zionism is off-limits no matter what dubious circumstances Israel was founded under; no matter what the Zionists do to the Palestinians; and no matter what wicked regimes Israel allies itself with — like South Africa. This position is untenable.” At a fundraiser for his reelection in 2010, hosted by Esam Omeish who had told Palestinians that “Jihad way is the way to liberate your land,” he complained that Jews had too much influence in American politics.

With regard to Israel, Ellison was one of only a small number of Congress people who recently voted against funding the Iron Dome, a missile system used by Israel to protect its civilians against rocket attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah. His voting record with regard to the nation state of the Jewish people is among the very worst in Congress.
Ellison is now on an apology tour, but his apologies and renunciations of his past association with anti-Semitism have been tactical and timed to his political aspirations.

He first claimed to realize that Farrakhan was an anti-Semite when he ran for office seeking Jewish support. His claim to be a supporter of Israel was timed to coincide with his run for the chairmanship of DNC. I do not trust him. I do not believe him. And neither should any centrist liberal supporters of Israel and opponents of anti-Semitism.

That's just swell, Alan. But given that you twice voted for Barack H. Obama, a hard leftist ideologue who despised the Jewish state and did his utmost to undermine it (not the least by empowering Iran, whose deranged theocrats are bent on Israel's destruction via nuclear means), I see your potential defection as a case of far too little, absurdly too late.Update: Keith Ellison has lost (to Tom Perez, who has the distinction, if that's what you want to call it, of having the shiniest pate in American politics.Guess that means ol' Deshy's staying put.

Friday, February 24, 2017

On January 20, 2017, producers for the CBC program Marketplace printed t-shirts containing racist logos and mottos, including "white power" and "white pride world wide [sic]," and hired a middle-aged white man to stand on a Toronto street to peddle the t-shirts and yell racist slogans.

The episode is titled "The Trump Effect" and was broadcast throughout Canada, including Alberta. It remains as a monument to our public broadcaster's colossal ignorance on the CBC YouTube channel...

That's the real "Trump effect." He makes the Left even more unhinged than ever (and that's saying something).

Today, we are in the presence of another people inside of the French nation, and this results in the fact that a certain number of democratic values that structured our society are now regressing. There won’t be any integration as long as we will not get rid of this atavistic anti-Semitism, which is concealed as a secret. Just let me quote an Algerian sociologist, Smaïn Laacher, who with great courage said as much in the documentary. “It is a shame,” he said, “to maintain this taboo that in Arab families in France—and everybody knows this but nobody wants to say it—anti-Semitism, it is suckled along with mother’s milk.

It was that "mother's milk" line--which was actually uttered by an Algerian, and which Benoussan was merely quoting--that sealed the Shoah memorializer's fate--and ensured his state prosecution. (It reminds me of the time Mark Steyn got in trouble for citing the words of a Norwegian imam.)A few things to observe from this. First, France is screwed, and so are its Jews. Second, don't think it can't happen here, because every indication is that it can.Finally, Jews cannot and should not count on Holocaust remembrance to inoculate the world against Jew-hate for the sake of "Never Again!"

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Did you know there was a "Canadian Bilingual School" in, of all places, Kuwait?No?Neither did I until an ad for it showed up on, of all places, my blog.(BTW, the two languages involved aren't English and French but are English and Arabic.)

How, then, did the exhibition reconcile the idea of Holy War with the idea of medieval Jerusalem as a multicultural beacon? First, as one moved through the gallery, the idea of “wag[ing] battle in the name of God against those perceived as infidels” became more limited and attenuated. The main practitioners of this form of warfare, it emerged, were the Christian Crusaders who arrived from Europe “to claim Jerusalem as rightfully theirs,” a campaign that ended in victory in 1099 “with the merciless slaughter of the city’s inhabitants.” And indeed, most of the artifacts in this gallery were associated with the Crusaders or invoked them: a 12th-century charcoal image of a military “saint” on horseback, a 12th-century marble capital showing a rider trampling his enemy underfoot, a 13th-century tomb of a French knight, a 12th-century map of Crusader Jerusalem, and so forth.

The gallery “Holy War” was thus really meant to be an intrusion, an anomaly. The Crusader conquest of Jerusalem was, we were to think, a kind of one-off example of “extreme ethnic and religious cleansing.” But what, then, of the Islamic reconquest of the city, and what of the role of Islamic jihad in general? Strikingly, only one significant artifact in this gallery was associated with Islam: a gilded Treatise on Armor from early-12th-century Syria that “belonged to Saladin, famed to this day for bringing an end to European control of Jerusalem” and for “rededicat[ing]” its Islamic sites. Was Saladin, then, also involved in Holy War? Not according to the curators, who write in the catalog that it was the Crusaders who “fueled” the idea of Holy War, turning jihad—until then a concept of spiritual struggle alone—into one of military struggle.So the Crusaders not only introduced Holy War, they also caused Muslim leaders to distort their own religious teachings by adopting a kind of Holy War in response.

If this argument sounds familiar, it should: a similar argument has gained much traction in recent years among those who regard 9/11 and other Islamist terrorist attacks as a form of deserved blowback for prior Western offenses against Muslims. Intent on its own version of this judgment, the exhibition portrayed the Crusaders as both the single exception to, and the primal cause of any further disruption of, the multicultural paradise of medieval Jerusalem.

Well, at least, for once, no one blamed the Jews.Then again, no one had to, for the message re the enduring importance of "diversity" in Jerusalem, a message which ignores how Christians have been ethnically cleansed from Bethlehem by Saladin's heirs, is both implicit and explicit.

While some Jews (you know the kind) continue to push for the passage of the Liberal government's "anti-Islamophobia" motion, Barbara Kay, with this one pithy paragraph, puts 'em all in their place:

I do not wish to be told by a petition or by the recommendations of a study based on that petition what I must think — or say in a considered and thoughtful way — about any ideology or belief system in deference to the sensibilities of a specific group in order to earn a seal of non-Islamophobic approval from agenda-driven advocacy groups and their political allies.

I read with shock Mira Sucharov's column "We must remember that we were once strangers in Egypt." (Feb. 9)

I could not believe the praise this columnist was giving to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who tweeted "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadian will welcome you, regardless of your faith."

The praise continues with Rabbi Dan Moskovitz describing Canadian immigration policy as a "model for the world."

Did she and her supporters not have any knowledge about the refusals of every single consecutive Canadian Liberal government to allow the admission of even one individual Syrian Jew into this country?

The Jewish community was suffering incredible restrictions in Syria, not being allowed to leave, being incarcerated in prison dungeons and tortured for even trying to escape, being watched and monitored constantly in their homes and synagogues by the Syrian secret police, the Muhabarat, only because they were Jews.

On behalf of the then-Canadian Jewish Congress, during the years when I was doing the secret rescue, I met with every Liberal minister of foreign affairs and immigration to ask them, literally to beg them, to allow a few Syrian Jews, some orphans and single young women to come to Canada and barring that, just to allow them to enter Canada temporarily for a few weeks until I could make other arrangements for them.

I was paying ransoms to buys these Jews. This took place not in the 1940s, but as late as 2001.

In the dozens of meetings with ministers and their associates, I was questioned about how I knew so much about the Syrians Jewish community and was accused on a few occasions of being an agent of a foreign government.

Nothing could be further from the truth. During those dangerous years of the rescue, I was able to quietly and secretly, with enormous difficulties and threats to my life, to bring out 3,228 Jews from the horror of Syria. Five Syrian Jews were admitted into Canada during the tenure of a Conservative government.

13th Annual Israeli Apartheid WeekToronto, March 13-17, 2017100 YEARS OF SETTLER COLONIALISM,100 YEARS OF POPULAR STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICEMark your calendars! The 13th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will take place in Toronto from March 13 to 17.First launched in Toronto in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. This year, IAW will take place in more than 150 cities across the globe. The week aims to raise awareness about Israel's ongoing practices of apartheid, occupation, and dispossession against the Palestinian people. Lectures, films, and creative performances will build support for the Palestinian Boycott, Divest...ment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

This year’s IAW will reflect on 100 years of resistance to settler colonialism across historic Palestine since the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. The Week will also link the history of Palestinian resistance to the struggles of the Indigenous peoples on whose territories we live, work, and study, and who are resisting settler colonial violence and dispossession. Our speakers this year will include Vijay Prashad, Lee Maracle, and Hind Awwad, among others.

Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto is organized by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) BDS Committee, Faculty for Palestine, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3902 BDS Committee.

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect--yes, that's what it's really called--doesn't have much, um, respect for Trump's latest statement condemning anti-Semitism; the organization says it amounts to Trump making us Jews "settle for crumbs of condescension."Funny, that's what I thought we were doing every time Barack Obama held a White House seder even as he was doing his utmost to undermine that pesky Jewish state (so rapacious; so colonialist; so unprogressive; so G-damned Joooish).But then, being in the "mutual respect" business and not the anti-Judenhass/Zionhass biz, the center would never cavil about those sorts of "crumbs".

It is more than a little disheartening to learn, via Robert Spencer, that Trump's new NSA pick, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, appears to be as out to lunch re core Islamic teachings and their impact on today's jihadis as anyone in the Obama White House.A commenter on the JW post directs our attention to a 22-year-old article by Conor Cruise O'Brien. O'Brien was weighing in on the war in Algeria, but his words, stated clearly and without the sort of equivocation that is evident in much contemporary writing about Islamic terrorism, retain their currency. O'Brien explains that:

"Fundamentalist Islam" is a misnomer which dulls our perceptions in a dangerous way. It does so by implying that there is some other kind of Islam, which is well disposed to those who reject the Koran. There isn't.

Islam is a universalist, triumphalist and political religion. It claims de jure dominion over all humanity; that is God's will. The actual state of affairs, with unbelievers of various sorts dominating most of the world, is a suspension of God's will and a scandal to the faithful. The world is divided between the House of Islam and the House of War, meaning the rest of us.

For more than two centuries now, the House of War has been in the ascendant, and the House of Islam has been abased. The remedy for this unnatural and intolerable state of affairs is jihad. Jihad is defined as "the religious duty imposed on all Muslims to wage war upon those who do not accept the doctrines of Islam". The Prophet Mohamed himself not merely preached but waged jihad. God's word, dictated to the Prophet and preached by him, is binding on all Muslims, and his example is their inspiration.

In the glorious centuries of expansion, the jihad carried Islam from Arabia, to the west as far as the Atlantic; to the north as far as Vienna; to the south as far as the Sahara and down the east coast of Africa to Madagascar; and to the east across Persia and the Indian subcontinent into part of China and Indonesia.

What is going on today in the Muslim world is not the advent of some aberrant thing called Islamic fundamentalism but a revival of Islam itself - the real thing - which Western ascendancy and Westernised post-Muslim elites no longer have the capacity to muffle and control. The jihad is back.

Furthermore, O'Brien reminds us that the "jihad-is-an-aberration-of Islam/ISIS-isn't-Islamic" schtick purveyed by the likes of Obama, Kerry and, sad to say, Trump's latest National Security Advisor, is hardly a new phenomenon:

In denouncing the hijacking of an Air France jetliner by four young Algerians, the US government has carefully avoided linking the crime to the Muslim religion. The hijacking was "a grave terrorist crime" for which there can be no justification whatsoever, said the State Department spokesman, Michael McCurry, implicitly rejecting the hijackers' claim to be acting in the name of Islam.

That the claim of a group of Muslims to be acting in the name of Islam, is rejected by an unbeliever, speaking for other unbelievers, will do little to reduce the credibility of the claim, in the eyes of other Muslims.

President Clinton's personal approach to this matter appears to be governed by a kind of woozy ecumenism, fairly prevalent among Western liberal churchmen. As the president told the Jordanian Parliament in October: "After all, the chance to live in harmony with our neighbours and to build a better life for our children is the hope that binds us all together. Whether we worship in a mosque in Irbid, a baptist church like my own in Little Rock, Arkansas, or a synagogue in Haifa, we are bound together in that hope."

"All the great religions are the same" is the idea. Only they aren't. The Clintonian world view observes the hard specificity of Islam. The Prophet Mohamed did not offer his followers a chance to live in harmony with their neighbours. He taught them to fight their neighbours, if they were unbelievers, and kill them or beat them into submission. And it is futile to say of those Muslims who faithfully follow those teachings today that their actions are "not intrinsically related to Islam".

We are facing an Islamic revival. The pro-Western rulers of the Maghreb and the Middle East know this, and know that their own stance is increasingly unacceptable to their peoples.

O'Brien's conclusion:

How the West should cope with the Islamic revival is a complex matter. But one thing is clear: we can never get it right if we go on trying to believe that there is something called "Islamic fundamentalism" which is somehow not intrinsically related to Islam itself.

Wow. Just...Wow.It is shocking to read this in 2017 knowing that it was published five years before Bin Laden's barbaric boychiks struck New York City on that fateful September day in 2001. And it is depressing as hell to know that, despite all that has happened since, most people are as clueless as ever about the Islamic revival, and, indeed, are big fans of "woozy ecumenism." And that amounts to a form of cultural and civilizational suicide.

Sweden is to appoint a special envoy to the Israel-Palestine peace process, Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced during the presentation of her foreign policy vision in parliament.

Wallström presented the ruling centre-left Social Democrat-Green coalition government's foreign policy declaration for the year in the Riksdag on Wednesday morning, continuing an annual tradition.

One of the key points is that the government will appoint a diplomat to work full-time on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The special envoy is to establish contacts and represent Sweden in international talks about the conflict.

"This year marks 50 years of the occupation of Palestine. Sweden continues to work for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will appoint a special envoy,” Wallström told the Riksdag.

"When I visited Palestine in December it was noticeable that hope can turn to despair, and this features heavily in the consultations that Sweden is holding with almost 150 Israeli and Palestinian civil society organizations," she added.

Sweden's relationship with Israel has been increasingly frosty in the past few years. In 2014 it recognized Palestine as a state, and Israeli officials have routinely refused to meet Wallström after she called for investigations into "extrajudicial" killings of Palestinian assailants by Israeli forces...

This is our country today: the MP sponsoring that "anti-Islamophobia" bill makes the outrageous claim that "more than one million Canadian Muslims"--to be clear, that's all the Muslims in Canada--"suffer because of Islamophobia" and "are victimized on a daily basis."If that's really so--and, clearly, it's a load of crapola--then why would any Muslim want to live here?Meanwhile, a handful of "Islamophobes" protested outside a Toronto mosque, prompting complaints to police (who, initially, were inclined to investigate the incident) and eliciting much hand-wringing and support for the mosque-goers. Something that is not--that won't--be investigated: the sort of prayers being recited inside this mosque. Stuff like this:

[O Allah!] Give us victory over the disbelieving people…

O Allah! Give victory to Islam and raise the standing of the Muslims

And humiliate the polytheism and polytheists

O Allah! Give victory (help) to your slaves who believe in the oneness of Allah, O the Lord of the Worlds!

O Allah! Give them victory over the criminal people

O Allah! Destroy anyone who killed Muslims

O Allah! Destroy anyone who displaced the sons of the Muslims

O Allah! Count their number; slay them one by one and spare not one of them

O Allah! Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!

O Allah! Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!

Right off the bat, police said the protesters may have crossed the "'fine line' between freedom of expression and [a]criminal act": upon further consideration, however, the cops have decided to drop the "investigation."Of course, there is no discussion of investigating the mosque's hateful spewage (because here in Canada, as long as the Islamic supremacism and "the filth of the Jews" palaver is chanted inside the premises, it's purely religious, and is therefore protected).

It has been a decade since “An Inconvenient Truth” brought national attention to climate change. Today, the debate rattles on more dramatically than ever: rogue NASA experts tweet statistics anonymously, diehard deniers cite conspiracy theories that place blame on globalization and rival economies, and environmentalism is used to sell Kia hybrids during the Super Bowl. The former Vice-President and longtime climate advocate Al Gore takes stock of the situation at this presentation, where he’ll use the latest available data to examine our progress, gauge how much damage may have already been done, and propose possible solutions.

Even with the "diehard deniers" conspiracy shtick, it's hard to reinvigorate the beast.

It's a non-gotcha, really, because it should be obvious to any sentient person that any "peace" initiative--be it "regional," local, international or even interplanetary--brokered by faux-patrician doofus/Obama factotum John Kerry was never going to fly.So what is the failed Sec'y of State, the man who thought to salve French wounds in the wake of a jihadi terrorist attack by bringing James Taylor to sing them "You've Got a Friend," doing now that he's a political nobody?Let's just say that, undeservedly, he's doing very well. Yes, very well, indeed.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Rex really blows it with this one. Here's the letter that, jet-lagged as I am, I dashed off in response:

The usually astute and redoubtable Rex Murphy lets us down when he relativizes both sides in the "Islamphobia" debate, accusing all participants of the sin of "virtue signaling"--a function, I think, of his misconstruing the meaning of the word itself.

I would encourage him to seek out its origin, which as it happens is not a matter of a difference of opinion, some believing it betokens a hatred of Muslims, others claiming it's a fraud being perpetrated by Islamists. According to a 2011 article on the subject in The New Republic:

At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term "Islamophobia" formed in analogy to "xenophobia". The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist.

Given that, I suppose one could describe it as "virtue signaling": the Ayatollah Khomenei signaling the "virtues" of messianic Shia supremacism--a line of thinking that currently threatens America and Israel, along with every Arab nation--to his followers and the rest of the world.

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.